Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut

Galaxy: Anna Bligh approval up 35 per cent Exotic Delights- By a Nose To expand the mindset, Kevin Roberts keeps a look out for anything far out on the edge, thoughts that run a mile from the ordinary and thoughts that look to the brighter side of life and was quite taken by Encyclopedia of the Exquisite – An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights for its many gems

The most satisfying work is voracious for unconventional blends of insight and ingenuity. To expand the mindset, I keep a look out for anything far out on the edge, thoughts that run a mile from the ordinary, thoughts that can connect disparate strands, and thoughts that look to the brighter side of life.

Literary morsels are good for this, and I was quite taken by Encyclopedia of the Exquisite – An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins. This delectable compendium weaves curiosity, obscurity, luxury and story to uncover small pleasures down through time.

Monday, February 21, 2011

A NEW movie titled State of Siege conjures scenes of a dismal, war-torn future rather than the leafy backblocks of Roseville. What really drove me to pick up my camera and say something was the moment I realised that under the heel of an uncaring bureaucracy and a dictatorial government, I and my fellow citizens were powerless and without influence. The one-hour documentary was made on a shoestring. The executive producer was Home and Away director Geoff Nottage, who gave his his time. Mr Grosvenor's wife Diane was the chief camera operator. Former NSW MP John Hatton, entrepreneur Dick Smith and NSW Opposition Leader and local MP Barry O'Farrell are interviewed. Mr Grosvenor said he requested an interview with Premier Kristina Keneally but did not receive a response My Castle: One man's stand against developers ; The seat that has almost become the epicentre of NSW politics in recent years, Penrith, will host the Liberal-National coalition's official campaign launch on Sunday. Ku-Penrith-gai ; John Hatton Team ; John Hatton Story and History

War doco filmed in Ku-ring-gai STATE OF SIEGE DENNIS Grosvenor has been living in a war zone at Roseville for three years.A powerful, must-see documentary at Roseville Cinema and all good cinemas

Feature length documentary that tracks the history and modern conflict between development and urban conservation. Steeped in a culture of political donations, modern politics has put the basic tenets of democratic rights under threat. "One may started asking questions and uncovered the arrogance of power..." Proceeds go to Wires Features commentary from:Jack Mundey - John Hatton - Lee Rhiannon - Sylvia Hale –John Mant – Dick Smith - Barry O’Farrell. STATE OF SIEGE- BackgroundDennis Grosvenor - Tropic of Oz Independent Films From the Green Bans of the late 1970’s to the present, there has been a constant battle between the forces of conservation and development. With few exceptions, when it comes to the economy and the profit motive, the environment has generally come a poor second. From Ku-ring-gai to Catherine Hill Bay, from the Tweed to Eden, bulldozers have either moved in, or are poised and ready to change the landscape forever, and the quality of life many take for granted. When my neighbourhood was rubber-stamped for demolition.

Grandfather knows best If this doesn't make you laugh, you're deadShe votes Democratic but lives Republican.

Man cannot live by masterpieces alone, nor can any playwright, however gifted, hope to produce them every time he sits down at his desk. It is in the nature of things that there must also be well-made pieces of intelligent entertainment to keep our fancies tickled, and there must be enough of them to keep actors from standing on unemployment lines and critics from going mad with boredom. Therefore let us now praise A.R. Gurney, who writes a play or two each year, some of them inspired, others merely solid, but all guaranteed to send you home feeling that you wasted neither time nor money by seeing them. "Black Tie," Mr. Gurney's latest effort, falls into the second class, scoring 100% on the intelligent-entertainment checklist.

• Grandfather knows best [ If this doesn't make you laugh, you're dead; Most people have a hard time understanding what the true value of their tax dollars would be if invested and saved for the future, says economist and Independent Institute Research Fellow Emily Skarbek, director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation. "MyGovCost.org's latest version is an easy-to-use tool that provides an understanding of how government spending directly impacts you MyGovCost.org]• · John Lantigua has this article today in The Palm Beach Post. Seventy years ago, Ohio farmer Roscoe Filburn found himself on the losing end of a U.S. Supreme Court case. He'd harvested 239 bushels more wheat than the federal government allowed and was ordered to destroy the extra crop and pay a fine. Wickard vs. Filburn could be an important touchstone this year as the health care law, called the Affordable Care Act by supporters and Obama¬care by opponents, heads to the high court Congress' power at heart of fight over health law ; Keneally plunges to record low • · · Adam Gopnik has this "A Critic at Large" essay in the February 14, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. Toast, as every breakfaster knows, isn’t really about the quality of the bread or how it’s sliced or even the toaster. For man cannot live by toast alone. It’s all about the butter. Its risk is real: evil things will register more vividly than the great mass of dull good The Information: How the Internet gets inside us ; Legislative Council Calculator• · · · Seat-by-Seat Prediction ; NSW Elections• · · · · A common image of the ‘political class’ running the Australian Labor Party is of a collection of daleks, without names or faces, and about whom it’s possible to believe the worst. But can we be sure that many of the nameless, faceless wouldn’t seem a bit less alike—and a bit more attractive as human beings—if they were allowed to tell us about themselves? Lessons from the Political Class; A decade that changed Australian journalism• · · · · · History’s Greatest Feuds: Man vs. Machine; Stephen Baldwin vs. Kevin Costner the oldest dog in America ; Artificial intelligence has advanced to the point that computers can very nearly pass for human. What are they telling us about ourselves? To find out, the author enters himself in a famous battle of. wits pitting man against computer ; A history of the Baghdad Express illuminates the resilience of politicized Islam From Berlin to bin Laden

In the words of H.L. Mencken, “There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats.”

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Jean's undoing, in my view, was nothing as humdrum as booze or tobacco or malnourishment, but a deadly streak of passivity of a kind that sometimes goes with perfectionism, and which I think she loathed in herself.-Wilfrid Sheed, "Miss Jean Stafford" Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power and leadership. - Vaclav Havel misquoting Abraham Lincoln I’m from a very, very small town in the middle of nowhere; it’s actually like one street, and everybody knows everyone. Economic woes can change a person. Take the money from someone's wallet, starve them for a time, and what they once thought important falls quickly to the realm of secondary consideration. In matters of romance, as happened during the Great Depression and other periods of history where need weighed heavily on the world, love is trampled by the desire for gain. Profitability and the perception of security hold dominion. Passion, affection, a pounding pulse, butterflies in the gut—those matter far less in times of prolonged hardship. Perhaps romance, those unspoken, treasured feelings that two souls share by looking into the eyes of the other, can still result from a union built first on shelter from the cruel world and monetary expectations. God Unknown

A visual look at global brands and celebrities with the most social media presence and followers. Which companies have utilised social media with success and who has the biggest Twitter following, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber?

• Polar opposites ; [Does anyone still care about dangling modifiers? An emphasis on sales and marketing has led publishers to ignore an important truth: Editors are supposed to edit The lost art of editing; At Ashley Madison's website for "dating," the infidelity economy is alive, well, and profitable Are you an aspiring adulterer? Noel Biderman is there for you. The motto of his budding Internet empire: “Life is short. Have an affair”. Cheating, Incorporated ; Fifty years ago a favorite language dispute showed up in print. A reader asked Ann Landers if it was “I couldn’t care less,” I could care less ]• · Computers can fly airplanes, but they can’t make plausible small talk. We forget how impressive humans are. Computers are reminding us Mind vs. Machine ; Times are changing in the world of Search Engine Optimization and it looks to liven up this sector. With Search Engines introducing ever more sophisticated algorithms, the art of providing good SEO Services is now crying out for more original and off the wall techniques Search Engine Optimization in 2011• · · Getting A Grip On Corporate Blogging; The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom Blogs to Riches• · · · hollywood; THR, Esq. Named Top Legal Blog • · · · · It's like a perfect battle. New guard vs. old school. The power of youth vs. the experience of the established. Trash vs. class. The faceoff between "Bound to You," Christina Aguilera's "Maybe This Time" moment toward the dramatic climax of Burlesque, and "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me," Cher's torch song belted as if from the depths of a movie career gone all too predictably sour with age, is one of those Oscar matches that elevates a category that in many other years seems as rote and irrelevant to the artistry of movies as Best Visual Effects Oscar ; It’s like Animal Farm. The pigs make all these noble rules, and then systematically subvert them Pitching Cold River; mazon Studios launched a new feature that allows writers to control the level of collaboration on their original scripts. Writers, upon upload or thereafter, will be able to designate their projects as open (anyone can add a revised script to your project), closed (only you can add revised scripts to your project) or revisable by permission (only participants who obtain your permission can add a revised script to your project). This feature has been a top request of Amazon Studios participants. Amazon Studios now slightly less terrible ; Welcome to Amazon Studios

Halfway through Phil Collins's new film, a statue of Karl Marx is winched out of a Berlin square. It recalls Fellini's La Dolce Vita, in which a statue of Jesus is airlifted over the roofs of Rome before the shenanigans begin. Both sequences invite similar questions. What happens when the key symbol of a culture is run out of town? Does life become sweet? Does it leave an icon-shaped hole?The Runcorn-born, Berlin-residing, 2006 Turner prize-shortlisted artist wanted to address these questions in his film, called Marxism Today. But most of all, he wanted to find out what happens to a discredited creed's followers, as they move into an alien new world. "I was in Berlin on the 20th anniversary of the Wall coming down. All the focus was on reunification and the subcultures of dissent that existed in East Germany – be it the Protestant church or punks. The one voice that wasn't heard was that of teachers of Marxism-Leninism in East Germany. Where did they go? There must have been a lot of them: it was a compulsory subject."

• We do not need no revolutions [In 1927 Barbara Follett published a much-praised first novel. She was 13. The book was about a young girl who disappears. In 1939, Barbara vanished.. Vanishing Act ; Samuel Johnson derided slang as “fugitive cant” unworthy of preservation, but the low idiom of thieves and beggars has evolved into a highbrow linguistic tradition Slang of ages ]• · The apparent randomness of scratch lottery ticket numbers is a mathematical lie. A geological statistician in Canada has cracked the code. Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code; The financial crisis revealed a grim truth: Too much prosperity, for too long, tends to devour itself. We crave booms, but they bring on busts. Rethinking the Great Recession • · · Pictures are naturally more memorable than a well written, evenhanded magazine story about the scope and tragedy of Detroit’s economic woes could ever be. But that’s precisely the problem. These indelible pictures present an un-nuanced and static vision of Detroit. They might serve to “raise awareness” of the Rust Belt’s blight, but raising awareness is only useful if it provokes a next step, a move toward trying to fix a problem. Ruin Porn- The Case Against Economic Disaster Porn; Instead of sheets--dirty tablecloths. The dog walked in the street and was ashamed of its crooked legs • · · · US and its slums; Steve Jobs is one of the heroes of our age. He’s changed our lives. But Apple is more than a one-man band. I think though that the time is right for him to pass over the reigns formally to Tim Cook who ran the place through Steve’s previous two absences Job • · · · · The Church of Scientology is being blamed for being more than just bizarre. News sources are reporting that the religious group is also behind human trafficking and exploiting free labor! ; Today's edition of The New York Times contains an editorial that begins, "When it comes to pushing the line between law and politics, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each had a banner month in January."Justice Scalia, who is sometimes called “the Justice from the Tea Party,” met behind closed doors on Capitol Hill to talk about the Constitution with a group of representatives led by Representative Michele Bachmann of the House Tea Party Caucus. Politics and the Court • · · · · · "Personal Privacy and the Right to Know": This editorial appears today in The New York Times. For 45 years, the Freedom of Information of Act has invigorated American democracy by obliging the executive branch to make public a splendid range of documents. It serves the people’s right to know, while leaving out data whose disclosure could be harmful ; This article appears today in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Few Wisconsin families have been touched by tragedy as much as the Krnaks Bar None: Lawyers' clients kept in dark on past issues

This country is merciless to good small talents. A writer who doesn't take chances and swing for the fences (whether or not he has a prayer of reaching them) is less than a man.-Wilfrid Sheed, review of Letters of E.B. White

Saturday, February 12, 2011

The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail reports the internal inquiry into Labor’s 2010 election fiasco being conducted by Bob Carr, Steve Bracks and John Faulkner “could open up selection of election candidates to the public”, American primaries style. This has always struck me as being the last bad solution for much of what ails the party, in view of the terminal membership decline of major political parties generally. NSW E*ection

Perspective: New Age, New Morals, New Leaders To speak of "moral leadership " in today's world seems a contradiction in terms. Almost every day, headlines tell of the disgrace, downfall, imprisonment or forced resignation of a political, corporate, religious, or community leader somewhere.The new paradigm for leadership means that leaders today must be chiefly concerned with giving service to their community -- rather than advancing their own ideas, careers or sense of privilege.

The corruption of leadership takes many forms. There are those who seek to use positions of power to accumulate wealth, undermine rivals, or win sexual favors. There are those who use their authority to advance some particular cause at the expense of justice to other ideas. There are those who care more for partisan advantage than the discovery of truth. There are those who seek to dominate out of a base desire to manipulate and control others. And there are those who abuse positions of advantage simply because they have not reflected on the true purpose of leadership.

• Leaders like Vaclav Havel see the culmination dissent in the formation of a “genuine community” Leadership [What combines Risk, Corruption and Incentives – and Leadership; Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life. The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin -- and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost Vaclav Havel ]• · Sensuality, along with Mystery and Intimacy, is one of the three magic ingredients in a Lovemark. Sight, scent, hearing, touch and taste are gateways to the emotions and a powerful means of connecting with the consumer. Each sense is profoundly complex, to a point where they defy description and easily slip from your grasp when you try to pin them down. Why is it easier to imagine what a lemon tastes like than to imagine what it smells like? ; Love is the only proper measure of a year in a human life. • · · Jason Whittaker of Zoamorphosis has posted the first review of Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety. Many thanks for his timely and professional review Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety ; The McGuire brothers are a study in contrasts - one a succesful personality the other about to be a politician Eddie and Frank McGuire: good cop, bad cop• · · · Here’s a note to all the news directors around the country: Do you want to save some money? Well then bring home your journalists following Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard, because they are not doing anything of any worth except having a round-the-country twitter and booze tour. Election 2010: Day 14 (or waste and mismanagement - the media);By now you’ve probably heard about social media and how it’s making celebrities out of mild mannered public servants and chirpy journalists who think in 140 character bursts. Maybe you’re wondering whether a witty and intelligent person like yourself could also become an internet celebrity. The good news is YOU CAN! Becoming a popular blogger is easy, unremunerative and unthankful, but easy• · · · · Writing is a creative act between the writer and the reader. Ad hominem comment threads brutalise that relationship. you can’t be a blonde and have a PhD! ; Prostitute, concubine, mistress, wife: the boundaries are blurred in this study Art – History - Mistresses through the ages• · · · · · THE advice from one of the country's most respected legal practitioners to the Governor-General is simple: "Let the people decide." Former Federal Treasurer and member of the Australian Gulf Council’s advisory team, Peter Costello with AGC chairman Alastair Walton; United Arab Emirates Foreign Trade Minister, Her Excellency Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, and former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, at an Dubai summit in December where Mr Hawke presented Her Excellency with an RM Williams leather briefcase. Arab farm investment push; WE thought 2010 would be a pivotal year, and we were right. It saw profound political shocks in Australia, Britain and the US. And it was the year China seemed to tire of Deng Xiaoping's injunction that the rising giant should bide its time, and began to assert its interests aggressively. Waning West; Californians used to be an optimistic and self-confident breed, their home a harbinger of America’s utopian future. Today, however, the Golden State exudes hopelessness

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women.-Groucho Marx

The NSW state elections are on the 26th March. If you believe in the old two party paradigm you have the choice of total incompetence on one side and no policies on the other. A salutory reminder that there are other options, greens independents etc. Multi party governments work quite successfully in other parts of the globe. For instance Swedens multi party government has given rise to the most social and economic success story in Europe.‘Politicians are the same all over – they promise to build a bridge where there is no river’ Time to get political...

A tale is told of a man in Paris during the upheaval in 1948, who saw a friend marching after a crowd toward the barricades. Warning him that these could not be held against the troops, that he had better keep way, he received this reply, " I must follow them. I am their leader."-A Lawrence Lowell, 1856-1943, President of Harvard University,Conflicts of Principle Whither the revolution?

New Year, same politics? Stopping that sinking feeling Quick Sand: You can't explain real estate bubbles by zoning controls The Age reports that Wendell Cox’s Demographia has released a study showing Melbourne to be 321st on a list of 325 most affordable world property markets. Decreasing land taxes is the real villain creating land and housing bubbles …

In other words, we’re almost the world’s most unaffordable market: almost the world’s dearest city. Incredibly, London, with a population of 7.6 million is said to be cheaper than the city of Geelong which is home to a population of only 200,000 souls. Amongst more important things I’ll mention later, it could be argued that homes and sites in Geelong are generally larger than those in London, but that’s not mentioned by Cox. Instead, he shoehorns Melbourne’s astronomical residential property prices to square with the extraordinary claim that they're a result of its zoning regulations. Perhaps this means Melbourne also has the 321st worst residential zoning regulations in the world?

Are your local MPS killing community-wise ideas?Culture vs creativity: Parliament is a Battle of Ideas There seems to be a distinct disconnection between the knowledge organizations need to be more creative to survive and a culture that knowingly or unknowingly hinders creative activities.

Recent research has identified three key factors that lead to optimal brain performance: moderate stress, good sleep, and positive affect (being happy). Another research and empirical evidence suggests that a no blame approach can be extremely constructive for organizations that want to enhance their learning processes.

Sunday, February 06, 2011

"Never pay any attention to what critics say," Jean Sibelius once told a fellow composer. "Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!" Wilfrid Sheed, who was (almost) as good a novelist as he was a critic, died two weeks ago Max Jamison

When it comes to writing sentences, we’re told – by Orwell, by Strunk & White – that brevity is best. But a minimalist style can encourage minimalist thought, and that’s a problem... The art of good writing

The saddest story: Three Questions You Would Ask Me If I Told You My Name Dude, Who Moved My Samovar? Wall Street Journal devoteS in its entirety to a review of the new off-Broadway production of Three Sisters. I used to have four sister, but now I only have three Eva, Margaretta, and Lidia. Agnesa’s (aka Aga) saddest story is swimming on the Amazon river …

In matters of style, swim with the current;In matters of principle, stand like a rock ~T. JeffersonIn Ira Gershwin's lyric for "But Not for Me," a heartsick postmistress declares that love has brought her "more clouds of gray/Than any Russian play/Could guarantee." If I had to guess, I'd say that the lady in question had "Three Sisters" in mind. Few plays are more depressing than Anton Chekhov's soft-spoken study of a turn-of-the-century trio of provincial Russian women who long for the bright lights of Moscow but are forced to settle for ordinary small-town lives that bring them little in the way of joy. What makes their story endurable is the lightness of touch with which Chekhov tells it--which is also what makes it so agonizing to see their remaining hopes dissolve at play's end.

• Her demeanor and voice are so obviously contemporary as to jolt the eye and ear.... [The sisters' tale is, of course, characteristically Russian in its jarringly close juxtaposition of comedy and heartbreak ; Born in the Soviet Union, buried in Venice, a citizen of America, the poet Joseph Brodsky was a nowhere man – a universalist and a cosmopolitan Buried in Venice – it is where I want to be buried after Vrbov; Your Honor, as you know, I have already pled guilty to the charges against me, but I appreciate this opportunity to provide some background for my actions …]• · Both novelists and philosophers ask big questions and try to impose order on the muddle of the world. But can a novelist write philosophically? ; Literary fiction is a sanctuary from everything coarse and shallow. Or so many novelists believe. It might explain why they’ve long ignored the Internet • · · Late in life, Rousseau acknowledged that it was arrogant of him to promote virtues he couldn’t live up to Sorry, Socrates, the examined life isn’t what it’s cracked up to be; Too much prosperity, enjoyed for too long, tends to devour itself • · · · The media don’t shape the culture; they merely reflect it, giving rise to today’s common readers: Those who have fallen in love with their own mediocre taste; Welcome to the new age of cultural populism: Elites are in retreat; hoi polloi have taken over. Could anything be more American?• · · · · Paul Theroux is 69, a good age to begin an autobiography. But after 500 words, he stopped with a realization: He can’t be trusted to tell the truth about himself. Across the dark sky of exile, Sirin passed... like a meteor, and disappeared, leaving nothing much else behind him than a vague sense of uneasiness. The more I reflect on my life, the greater the appeal of the autobiographical novel. The immediate family is typically the first subject an American writer contemplates. I never felt that my life was substantial enough to qualify for the anecdotal narrative that enriches autobiography. I had never thought of writing about the sort of big talkative family I grew up in, and very early on I developed the fiction writer’s useful habit of taking liberties. I think I would find it impossible to write an autobiography without invoking the traits I seem to deplore in the ones I’ve described—exaggeration, embroidery, reticence, invention, heroics, mythomania, compulsive revisionism, and all the rest that are so valuable to fiction Therefore, I suppose my Copperfield beckons.; The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas There's a heaven above you, baby. • · · · · · In spite of what arriviste critics tell us, good, even great writers are lost in the cracks in every generation, and we must always ask ourselves if we have chosen to be a society too smug to indulge such a humble notion. It is for this reason alarming to see literary agents, editors and critics take refuge in the self-serving lie that what deserves to be published is published. But as the means to publish expand and new technologies evolve, the critical apparatus is unable and unwilling to keep up. Many good works are ignored. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley said of critics that they reflect the ignorance of the age. I find this amusingly harsh. I owe much to critics for directing me to worthy books. But the odor of truth lingers about Shelley's observation. There are some writers in every genre—I would extend this to the plastic arts—who by nature touch so many raw nerves that even when editors and critics see merit in their work they decline the work because it has nicked them in some vulnerable place. With luck, such writers and artists may find the one advocate whose commitment to creativity surpasses his or her vulnerability to disturbing insights.It's all very well to say that editor after editor passed up Herman Melville's Moby-Dick because the crazy pursuit of a whale wasn't deemed a suitable literary subject, but I suspect it was the profound insights that Melville sewed into the seams of his work that put off those editors. Their supposed disinterest in a whale was their cover story. Savoring this tone, this profane interiority, is like watching and listening to an attractive young woman walking on a crowded street talking to herself… A good poet knows exactly how her inmost dialogue is conducted, how it sounds, and so she is very like the young woman walking down the street fully engaged in the life of her own mind. We may choose to put her down as crazy, but in our hearts we know she’s into herself, exactly where you have to be to mean what you say and say what you mean. A Restless Experimenter With A Savvy Voice ; Recent history indicates that Central Europe and Latin America have a lot in common ; All Too Quiet on the TRANSITIONS ONLINE Front

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Julian Burnside rather than Assange links to this - Given that this is the Michael Kirby Oration, allow me a couple of minutes to talk about Michael Kirby PRINCIPLES, PRAGMATISM AND POLITICS

Lions on the Move The Digger and the dirt The next casualties of Britain’s phone-hacking controversy could come from the media, politics or the police. But whoever falls next, it probably won’t be good news for the business interests of Australia’s most influential American citizen. They still call him “the Digger” here in London, more often the “Dirty Digger,” so it just wouldn’t ring true if he were called an American media tycoon. But in that respect, the British are not so very different from Australians.

After all, the ABC’s annual Boyer Lectures are, according to its website, an occasion when the board “invites a prominent Australian… to present six radio lectures expressing their thoughts on major social, cultural, scientific or political issues.” Yet the Boyer Lecturer for 2008 was a United States citizen. “I appreciate that many Australians will debate whether I still have the right to call myself one of you,” Rupert Murdoch (almost) apologised…

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

"Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right."-Mark Twain, undated memorandum

"He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. The year featured drops in the number of Free countries and the number of electoral democracies, as well as an overall deterioration for freedom in the Middle East and North Africa region. A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world. Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators Freedom in the World 2011 Survey Release

Media Dragons & The Wealth Revolution Why the Rich Are Getting Richer American Politics and the Second Gilded Age "The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years; foreclosures have forced millions of Americans out of their homes; and real incomes have fallen faster and further than at any time since the Great Depression.

Many of those laid off fear that the jobs they have lost -- the secure, often unionized, industrial jobs that provided wealth, security, and opportunity -- will never return. They are probably right. And yet a curious thing has happened in the midst of all this misery. The wealthiest Americans, among them presumably the very titans of global finance whose misadventures brought about the financial meltdown, got richer. And not just a little bit richer; a lot richer. In 2009, the average income of the top five percent of earners went up, while on average everyone else's income went down. This was not an anomaly but rather a continuation of a 40-year trend of ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top one percent has increased from roughly eight percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today...Such a level of economic inequality, not seen in the United States since the eve of the Great Depression, bespeaks a political economy in which the financial rewards are increasingly concentrated among a tiny elite and whose risks are borne by an increasingly exposed and unprotected middle class. Income inequality in the United States is higher than in any other advanced industrial democracy and by conventional measures comparable to that in countries such as Ghana, Nicaragua, and Turkmenistan. It breeds political polarization, mistrust, and resentment between the haves and the have-nots and tends to distort the workings of a democratic political system in which money increasingly confers political voice and power."

If you must write, you must do it in the face of all opposition. […] Do not spend too much more time on culture & reading, these are traps. When everything conspires to make the thing impossible, when you are tired, worried, with no time, or money, it is then that things get done.
~ Samuel Beckett to Claude Raimbourg, 16 May 1954

A tale of Cold River, manages to trap a tiny speck of theatre of absurd of the kommunist Czechoslovakia in amber and then put time in a bottle, forever uniting them in our collective memory and imagination ... History has failed us, but no matter

"... The most important expression which the present age has found… a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape.”
~ T.S. Eliot lauding 'Cold River' in our dreams ;-)

A fluent stream of words awakens suspicion within me. I prefer stuttering for in stuttering I hear the friction and the disquiet, the effort to purge impurities from the words, the desire to offer something from inside you. Smooth, fluent sentences leave me with a feeling of uncleanness, of order that hides emptiness.
~An Untouchable Fire: Remembering Aharon Appelfeld

“We begin to live when we have conceived life as tragedy.”
W.B. Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil

Within a few generations almost all of us will be forgotten. Those who are not will have no bearing on how we are remembered, who we once were. We will not be there to protest, to correct. In the end we might exist only as a prop in someone else’s story: a plot device, a golem.

Only an artist can tell what it is like for anyone who gets to this planet to survive it. What it is like to die, or to have somebody die; what it is like to be glad
~ James Baldwin

Defying every expectation of what communism used to be, imagine a system where the key to success wasn’t hard work or merit, but conniving and politics. If you sold your soul to the devil, you were rewarded Hey Millennials: Communism Sucks, I Lived It

It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.
— George MacDonald, born in 1824

Wisdom listens ... As the wise Vrbov Cemetery mortalist, David BenATAR, once noted even turning blood into ink is bad as "our lives are ultimately meaningless. We cannot satisfy the need for meaning in the mundane." Our human 'iron curtain like' predicament also means that it is impossible to realise genuine escape: "We are in a bind, a fix, a jam, we can't get out, and there is no one to help us ...We are caught in an "existential vise" between life and death ..."

Kneading memory makes the dough of fiction; which we know, sometimes never stops rising ...

The Cold (War) River is finished, I am sensible how imperfectly, but certainly to the best of my limited abilities ... WE HAVE NO VOICE, AND SOMETIMES IN THIS SHORT LIFE ON EARTH WE MUST SCREAM!

"We Became River"
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
— G. K. Chesterton via AFL Legend and a Briliant Aboriginal Mittleuropean Mark Heiss

According to a quote sometimes attributed to not so great Jozef Imrich and the great Albert Einstein: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay in trouble and with problems longer."

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is nothing original about me except a little original bohemian sin.
I hope you will be treated unfairly ...

"My position is that you cannot work towards peace being peaceful. If the peace is to be one where everybody’s quiet and doesn’t open up ... share what’s unspeakable ... offer unsolicited criticism ... defend others’ rights to speak and encourage discourse — that peace is worth nothing. It reminds me of the kind of peace that was secured in my old country under the Communist regime. That is the death of democracy. That might have consequences as bad as war—bloody war and conflict. So, to prevent the world from bloody conflict, we must sustain a certain kind of adversarial life in which we are struggling with our problems in public."
~ Krzysztof Wodiczko

“The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one calls man into a caricature.”
~ Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way

"Cold River's" history keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose. [Cold as ice, but in the soulful hands the story melts ... a literary treat you, insomniacs, can enjoy for years (because that's how long it will take you to get through it ...)]
~ John le Carre

Thomas Aquinas’s ultimate act of apparent humility occurred on December 6, 1273, St. Nicholas’s Day, when he was forty-eight or forty-nine years old. Aquinas was celebrating Mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas, and he again had a vision. What exactly he saw is unknown. But afterward, he did not resume his dictation as he usually would. Reginald prodded him to get back to work, but Aquinas responded, “I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw.” He stopped writing altogether, leaving his Summa Theologiae—the summary of theology, and his masterwork—incomplete.

“An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about; he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.”
~Randall Jarrell, “Ten Books” (The Southern Review, Autumn 1935)

François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire tends to share the most profound observation: “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh”

However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth … steps in and does something. So, the poet Robert Frost said, "no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader".
Is it more foolish to risk your life or risk wasting your life? To live at all is miracle enough ...

Q. How did you get into philosophy in the first place?
A. Failure
— a soulmate, Simon Critchley

MEdia Dragons are keen observers of leadership and politics in all its drama and absurdity.

“My theory has always been to write a real small story against a big background.”
~ Burt Kennedy

As Dr Cope once observed about knowledge and wisdom "...all the data in the world is in the ocean, however the value is in the fish"

There’s so much that’s unsayable and unspeakable about Iron Curtain escapes, but when it comes time for the story to be told, it takes over...There is more to it than any summary could hope to capture.

Dylan Thomas pointed out that the best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps ... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone.
— Henry Green

Cold River is like a secret image, a photograph is a secret about a secret. It is about surviving and playing the cards that are dealt you, even if it looks like a losing hand. The more it tells you the less you know... The anthropological folkloric tale is about the strange relationship between a secret and knowledge. A secret is, necessarily, relational—like difference, it needs another just to exist, whether to be shared in confidence or because it cannot be shared. It is a perfect book for paranoid times ...

'This story is more than a history of escapes. It’s not easy to say where, exactly, you would shelve it. It could be under memoir. Or is it more like anthropology? . . . The other option would be farce just like the life under communism ...
The aim of Cold River is to prepare a person for death...

"We all know that funny feeling of filthiness, of contagious ickiness. It's a feeling we call the prick of conscience when we make a compromise that we have doubts about. So we think about it again and again, and... we even worry about it somewhat, even though the compromise may have made life easier, compared to what would have happened had we not made it. But for myself...I see that my bravery comes out of cowardice, because I am afraid of feeling that ickiness of feeling that I've done something wrong, that I've made an undesirable compromise, that I've side-stepped; and conversely when I do something that I know is right, I can even have a feeling of euphoria."
~ Vaclav Havel

"We acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respect to them and their cultures, and elders past and present."

Frequently, one of the best ways to get insight into a culture is through its humour ...
So under communism when we wanted to hear God laugh, we made meticulously planned escapes from the totalitarian regimes. Our young fragile ironic stories under totalitarianism were not crying out to be told. And yet ....

Mark Twain once said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

Like the ForeReads or Outline, Cold River and Media Dragon are not for everyone. It's for bohemians like you...
Outline

Good blogging like journalism is sharing what somebody else does not want printed; everything else is public relations... It is our business to know something about every subject – or to know where to get the knowledge (Dr Cope, J Hatton, MO'N etc ) One of our strengths is finding stories in unexpected places ...

MEdia Dragons are known for their 6-foot-2 stature and are often expected by totalitarian characters to play villains... There’s a deeper poetry and music that runs through and beneath the Cold River...

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."
~Matthew 7:7 (Ask, Seek, Knock )

Consider why you should not go through life without seeking Simon Sinek or seeking the story of the Cold River ...Please suspend your disbelief: “I write about my father and mother, their generation, and my own limited experience, our struggle for individual freedom and self-expression in the Mitteleuropean Orwelean society. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it. We need to remember that all rivers are fearless and free. They come and go as they please, and borders or governments do not bind them. All rivers are filled with liquid histories and stories. Shame, failure, despair, utter horror, these are all stations on the journey, even after completing a ‘draft of a draft.' Slavic Blues Memoir, the offspring of the slave narrative ...
Certain stories that get virtually no traction nevertheless involve phenomena that are quite important in understanding the way the world operates. For instance, not a lot of people know that 'Cold River' is everywhere as it is the history of the entire world: As every of the tyrant it has deposed ...
Many things in life – oh so many more than we think – can never be explained at all...
“One must be something in order to do something,” Goethe counseled a young friend in 1824 ..." Our story emerges from our bones! And why we are not satisfied with simply making an impression; why do we want to mark our readers and listeners for life?"

Great writing is like diving: anybody can get from the platform to the pool—or the pavement—but some, with grace and sweat and just a bit of swag, can make that brief passage through the air angelic in its beauty and terror. “We started talking about dying long before the first one of us jumped ...

"No one leaves home, unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for the border when you see your whole city running as well. You have to understand that no one puts children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land."
~ 'Home' by Warsan Shire

If you are in the business of finding out what’s true — whether that business is social science, military intelligence, journalism, the hard sciences or something else — there is an elusive quality you find among the best in the field. It might be called the Cold Eye. It’s not a term you will find in textbooks. It’s a matter of character as much as professional skill. It’s some combination of having the mental discipline to gird yourself against your own biases, the instinct to resist the tendency to think that knowledge once learned is static and an ability to look at more signals, data points and ideas from disparate places than other people usually do.
Perhaps more important, the Cold Eye is motivated by a deep intellectual independence and a passionate psychological connection to telling the truth.
~ Tom Rosenstiel

I even ignored advice to change my name ... If I wasn't Jozef Imrich, I'd probably think that Jozef Imrich has a lot of answers myself.

Most writers waste people’s time with too many words. I’m trying to reduce everything
down to the minimum. My last work will be a blank piece of paper.
— Beckett

What an ordinary, artificial life I’ve led. And how ordinary and artificial it is to write about it, as if for ‘posterity’. What do I have to say? In an absolute sense, nothing. And that’s what I’m saying.
— Frenet, Journal

... “If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr
“Show me somethin’ dat caution ever made!”
~ Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God Freedom or Death: Ondrej a Milan
"I have one consistency, which is being against the totalitarian – on the left and on the right. The Totalitarian is the enemy

There are no depths of irony, or bad taste, to which extreme communists or rotten capitalists won’t sink if they think they can grab power or make money out of it...

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come… We live everything as it comes, without warning.

We can only compare Cold River to reading the Bible :-) So escape the beaten path ...

When you read your own work as something fresh, something strange, it can be very exciting – especially if there’s time to make revisions. But then, once published, you almost inevitably discover typos, mistakes, and causes for regret and even remorse. As in a lover’s quarrel, sometimes we wish we could take the words back. But it’s almost never possible. …

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“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

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Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because this is where the magic happens.
It may seem really strange but I feel as though I actually died some time ago and I’m living in an afterlife. Only in the age of Amazon.com age is a Tale like Cold River by Imrich possible … in 21st century after all,the greatest things in life are shared on the web
Cold River: fast-moving digital waters

“If you know how to read, you do not need many books […] Learn to meditate on a few lines, even from a mediocre author; nothing bears fruit unless it is rooted in meditation.”
~ Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire (1802-1861), the French priest who reestablished the Dominican Order after it was neutralized following the French Revolution

We are not the wordly boys we used to be on the interrete. We are no longer desirable, We are off-putting in some way. It’s not just that We have put on weight, or that our face are puffy from the drinking and the lack of sleep; it’s as if people can see the damage written all over us, they can see it in my face, the way we hold ourselves the way we move ...

Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world: If you live life to the point of tears every Negative has a Positive, You just have to look for it. Blogs Help to filter the world ;-) Without Struggle/No Freedom ...

Sole survivors might often be thought of as anonymous, but we never want to be voiceless. Why true stories and icebergs say so much ... The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. Till taught by pain or borders less travelled, men really know not what freedom's worth: # Each Age Calls forth its own Bohemian Voice... Elena Ferrante

Sandra Cisneros tells us, Write about what makes you different.
Your readers want to see the world through your eyes ... A sole survivor explores the world where the 'other' fears to tread and creates the most unlikely true story you'll ever read. You are different and so is Cold River:

There may be no greater act of bravery for someone with a fear of needles than to donate blood. Of course, it's this kind of giving that is so important to maintaining the Red Cross's life-saving stocks

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist, wrote Salman Rushdie. The Iron Curtain came down since Rushdie's novel, the Satanic Verses, earned the Booker Prize-winning novelist death threats, but the question persists.

MEDIA DRAGON We search the world ... So you can read thoughtful and down to earth media dragons at one place

Can one person make a difference? It's easy to be cynical about the power of one. But a person's importance, so difficult to quantify in life, is perhaps more easily measured in death – and the gaping holes left behind